


An Avenue Once Bent in Shadow

by satin_doll



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, Angst, Character Study, Eventual hot vampire sex, F/M, New Relationship, Not your usual vampire, Sherlock as vampire, Sherlolly - Freeform, Vamp!lock, mollock, molly is molly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-07-24 15:09:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7512964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/satin_doll/pseuds/satin_doll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>A slightly shorter chapter. The usual disclaimers apply. Please review, comment, critique, leave a smiley or a banana peel. Tell me what you think. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Just kidding about the banana peel. :)</p></blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

1.

Lonely. 

He doesn’t know what the word means anymore, if he ever did know it. He has been alone so long, it never occurs to him to seek the company of another, seek warmth or friendship, or love; he feels no lack without them. He reads the word _lonely_ in stories, novels, stolen letters, without understanding. He still recognizes the other words - warmth, friendship, even love; he thinks he may have known them once, in a time before. But loneliness as a major theme leaves him puzzled or bored and he rarely finishes those stories, preferring the ones about treasures and wars, sins and vices and death, subjects he remembers and understands clearly. 

She intrudes on him. That’s how he sees it. His life is ordered, small, a complete circle. He lives by his routine, keeps to it religiously because...because there is danger to him if he doesn’t. Tolerating an intrusion puts him at great risk. He resolves to discourage her somehow, to send her on her way, preferably without causing her harm (he vaguely recalls that harm _should_ be an option in these situations...), with no disruption to either of their lives. 

At first it is glances, over her shoulder, looking up when he passes on his way to the shelves. Then he finds her watching him outright as he moves about doing his job. Then comes one shy smile, and another (which he never returns, that would be quite stupid of him) and now she is saying hello when she sees him. He never answers, tries not to look at her, simply moves past and continues doing what he is doing. Until one day she follows him to the shelf where he is working, and insists on interacting with him. He ignores her until she reaches up and takes hold of his arm, gently pulls him around to face her. He is sure his shock shows on his face, but she smiles at him as if she doesn’t notice. 

“I know you’re not deaf. I asked at the desk. Please stop ignoring me.” She smiles as if she thinks this is funny.

He stares at her. Usually this is enough to discourage people from having anything to do with him. He is good at the stare, has honed and polished it over many, many years until it is perfect. He can turn it on someone instantly and they will scurry away from him like frightened mice. He doesn’t fool himself into thinking that he would (or could) ever follow up on the implied threat. So far the stare has worked flawlessly. He really never considers anymore what he would do if it didn’t work; too many years have passed since the last time he has had to protect himself that way and he doesn’t recall a rule about it.

_Never let them into your life; keep yourself separate. They are death, lasting death, and no matter how soft or harmless they seem, all of them are dangerous._

Remember. 

He has forgotten so much. The weight of time squeezes the memories out, replacing them with pure instinct, the will to survive. The rules stay; they were ground into the bones, implanted in the cells - the rules are _being_ , not survival. _This_ _is_ _what_ \- _how -_ _we_ _are_.

Thiswoman _...she holds my life or death in her hands, and she never suspects. I am at the mercy of her goodwill and she stands there smiling as if she is innocence and care and all good things instead of the possible instrument of my demise._

She looks back at him with large brown eyes, a little smile still on her lips. He wants to shove her away, run from this place. _No_ _matter_ _how_ _soft_ _or_ _harmless_ _they_ _seem_ , _all_ _of_ _them_ _are_ _dangerous_. It is hard to see the danger in this small woman, with her large doe eyes and soft thick hair, but he knows it is there. He sniffs: she smells of roses and bergamot, and something else, something musky and warm... _but_ _if_ _she_ _knew_ _about_ _him_ , _knew_ _what_ _he_ _was_...no, no, he can’t risk her _seeing_ him, no matter how curious he might be about her, about why she is so taken with him, why she pursues him when the others do not. Were there others like her, long ago…? It’s a wisp of an idea, too vague and ephemeral to grasp.

He turns away from her, flashes to the door and leaves, slips into darkness where he is safe, protected, secure. She is left standing alone, sad and disappointed. She is better off that way, he thinks, and fades into the night.

2.

She watches him turn from her, and he disappears; she blinks and he is gone. It saddens her, and suddenly there are tears in her eyes, unexpected, hot and painful. She has watched him for weeks. Each time she has seen him, her fascination has grown, until tonight she can’t resist it any longer and approaches him as he shelves the books in the stacks. She has watched him at this activity so often before, his smooth, pale hands with the grace of doves, lifting and placing, lifting and placing. It is hypnotic. She has watched, almost mesmerised, as he walked from stack to stack, tall, ascetically slender, straight and noble as a stag. 

The whispers about him abound: He is some tragic nobleman, fallen on hard times; he is a poet who has lost his love and has sworn celibacy in honor of her; he is an outlaw who is hiding from the Yard, falsely accused...all of the women have their own story about him, some romantic fantasy to fit his odd and compelling beauty. He shuns them. He speaks only when absolutely necessary, as if his deep and resonant voice, so rich and lush it sounds like sin and depravity, angels and heaven woven all together, might cause a catastrophe if used too often.

She wants him to look at her. He keeps his eyes downcast as he moves, pushing the cart past the reading tables, into the stacks. She yearns for those eyes, to have him look back at her, to _see_ her. It becomes an obsession, getting him to turn, to raise his eyes to hers. She follows him into the stacks, reaches out and boldly takes his arm, turns him…

Afterward she can’t quite remember. Were they blue? Green? Grey? Gold? All of those together? All she can recall is being frozen in place, unable to speak, passion flaring in her blood, driving her heart like a piston, out of control...and then nothing. He is gone, leaving inside her a terrible, tragic sadness, as if she’s suffered a great and nearly unbearable loss.

He smelled faintly of dust.

3.

He slips through the broken window of the abandoned warehouse, runs up the stairs to the top floor. It is one huge open space, empty, dusty, except for one corner. There he lights a small lantern, although he doesn’t need the light; following the habits of humans helps him to remember he is supposed to be like them. There are two mattresses on the floor, one on top of the other. He is more comfortable that way; he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t sleep there, his brief dormant states require no comfort, but he likes to lie down when he reads. Nearby is a garment rack, hung with only the necessities: a few suits, a dark jacket, some shirts, a coat, a scarf. Beside that is a basket holding underwear, socks. Several pairs of shoes are lined up in front of it. Only the bare minimum, to help him pass. There is a large jug of water in the corner, should he need it, to rinse his mouth or wash away blood and filth. Near the wall are neat stacks of books, hundreds of them, of all kinds, stolen over the years wherever he could find them.

Once on a time, he lived like an animal - naked, filthy, running loose in the countryside away from humans. He could do that then, and get away with it. There were villages, small towns; it was easy to steal into them at night and take what he needed. Then came a day, after he had been burned out of his den, chased and nearly caught, that he dimly realized it would be safer to camouflage himself, to live among them instead of hiding. He understood that his physical appearance was enough like them to pass as one of them; he was not misshapen, he did not look like a monster, as he had been told in the beginning. As he spent more time among the humans, he saw that most of them considered him quite beautiful. 

These days no one questions his strange behavior; they simply write him off as mentally incompetent. They take pity on him, some of them _if_ _he_ _takes_ _advantage_ _of_ _his_ _beauty, uses it to play on their tendency to be kind to pretty things_ give him odd jobs for the small amount of money he needs for clothes and other items in order to pass. He lives apart, but is able to blend in when needed. He’s learned much about humans and the basics of how they operate, from reading and from observation. 

He is safer now than before, because they have ceased to believe in him.

He never lacks for food, although it is not the best. The ones who wander the edges are not healthy, are often diseased. The diseases won’t harm him but they ruin the taste. It has been a long time _a_ _very_ _very_ _long_ _time_ since he has tasted pure clean blood. But obtaining it is too dangerous. Best if he keeps to the fringes, out of the light. Safer.

_They will always hunt you. They cannot tolerate difference, divergence. They will see you as monstrous, evil. They cannot be trusted, ever._

They no longer hunt him, no longer seek places he might hide, not as they did in the beginning. He has faded from their reality, along with so much else. But that doesn’t erase the danger. He is still different, still not one of them, and if they discover the extent of his difference, discover what he truly is, he will be ended. 

He doesn’t want to end. He has considered it, several times. Each time he has stood on that precipice, however, his view has expanded. He has seen more and more of the world and simply cannot leave it. He can see the years unfold, open into a brilliant kaleidoscope, millions of shapes and colors in an endless, eternally changing dance, and he can’t bear to let it go. Not yet.

So he finds ways to exist, to go on, finds ways to explore that don’t threaten his existence. He lives his life, such as it is. He lives.

4.

Life whittled down to the barest necessities, time structured to weed out distractions - she lives with minimums; it keeps her from the hurt, the pain of being different. It colors and covers her aloneness with the illusion of choice. _I_ _choose_ _to_ _be_ _alone_ , _I_ choose _to_ _live_ _simply_ , _it_ _is_ necessary _for_ _my_ _work._ The aloneness carries its own price, its own pain, but it is less than the pain of rejection.

She didn’t choose to be different. She can’t be held responsible for an accident of birth. But others act as if she did choose it, as if her differences are not in her body, in her genes, but only in her imagination and attitude and can be adjusted to suit the dictates of whatever is currently acceptable to the ones who dictate those things. She is unaware of fads and trends, unaware of what is the current rage, is always hopelessly behind or blind to the fashionable. Her vision is elsewhere, her focus on the intricate, the somewhat esoteric; on knowledge and understanding of subjects of which most have never heard, let alone encountered. She sometimes, when her sensitivity is offended at behavior she finds strange, or, in her view, unacceptable, sees others as sheep, blindly and aimlessly following whomever they believe is in the lead, even if that leader is going around in circles. Then she feels shame, feels the full brunt of her differences _her_ _wrongness_ thinking she might rather be a sheep than be an outsider _a reject_ so apart from everyone else. She takes on the burden of blame for their rejection. 

The man in the library at night - he is different also, even more so than she. She senses it right away, like an echo resonating in her chest. She is shocked at his odd beauty, is well aware of how the others observe him, discreetly or openly, how they whisper and sigh and stare. He seems oblivious to all of it. He never smiles, never interacts with the others if he can help it. He shelves the books; gathers them from the tables, picks them up at the desk, rolls them into the stacks on his cart, puts them away. It is monotonous work, robotic, but he goes about it with a seriousness that would imply it is a needed function to avert disaster. 

She is drawn to this man, knows there is something deep that sets him apart, something far greater than his beauty and grace and silence, something that the others - though they may be distracted and drawn by his physical beauty - will never see. Something in his _being_ that is not quite...right. When he doesn’t respond to her approach, she experiences sadness at his leaving, feels bereft even, but it is not like rejection - it is loss, as if for just a moment she possessed a rare and valuable _beloved_ object that has suddenly been taken from her.

Her life, her work, is filled with mysteries, with puzzles. She is adept at putting the pieces together, finding a coherence in the odd bits and shapes of information and making them whole. This man is a mystery, a puzzle. She resolves to solve it, to find _him,_ in the odd bits and pieces she sees. And so begins her distraction - planning, scheming, filling up whatever spare time she has thinking about him, and how she might gather more information. After their one brief close up encounter, he has kept far away from her in his rounds of the tables, his stops in shelving the books; accosting him again in the stacks probably won’t work. No matter. She is adept at finding alternate ways to look at problems, finding answers through various winding pathways. She will solve him eventually. This planning, this _purpose_ in her life makes her happy, makes her smile. It is her secret, her very own, that she keeps from the others as if it were a most valuable treasure, one that all of them would dearly love to have, but is hers alone. 

5.

She will not stop watching him. He had thought their brief encounter would be enough to push her away. She has no reason to be there in the library every night. He knows which books she chooses and they are random, silly choices: Romance novels, various scientific texts on obscure subjects, an occasional children’s book. There is no pattern to the choices and this disturbs him. His conclusion that she is actually there to watch him stirs a cloudy memory, worrisome thoughts. There is a familiarity to all this that does not bode well, but it is unclear, muddy.

He is loath to move elsewhere. This job, this location is suitable for his needs, he doesn’t want to give it up to the whim of a silly woman. The proximity to his lair alone is enough to make it desirable. He has become accustomed to this life and this occupation. Until this woman appeared, he was comfortable enough in his routine and feeling as safe as he had ever felt. Now she is a threat. Having to do more to dissuade her from this idiotic preoccupation with him will not only be annoying, it might stir trouble in other areas. He doesn’t want the possible attention. 

Along with the annoyance, however, is a perilous curiosity. Most people are willing to let him be a mystery. They are content to leave their fascination in the realm of fantasy and speculation. Why is this woman different? Why won’t she let it go?

In his years in this city, he has become used to the lust he occasionally sparks in both men and women. He has used it to his advantage before. Humans are so susceptible to beauty. They seem to crave it, and mistrust it in equal measure. But always, when the inconvenience arises of being attracted to someone like himself, someone who returns not one iota of interest or feeling, the attraction wanes; the problem resolves itself. The human fear and abhorrence of difference is enough to drive them away - as long as that difference is one that they are familiar with, one that may be a danger but is a known, human danger. If they knew the true nature and extent of his difference…

And that is the real threat to him that this woman poses. She obviously doesn’t care about the known, human danger. If she did she would have long since given up on him. She senses something more in him, a deeper and more significant difference - and apparently doesn’t fear it. 

Not yet. 

6.

He cannot risk another encounter inside the library, and so he resolves to follow her to her home, to confront her there and do whatever is necessary to disenchant her. The night he chooses is warm and pleasant; there are many people out and about. He decides to break his own rule and treat himself; he can’t recall the last time he did this. He tracks a young male strolling by himself on a quiet street, and takes him down, pulling the boy behind a hedge row in front of an empty building. He only takes enough to ease his hunger. He has no lust for killing. He leaves the boy lying on the ground, weak and dazed, but alive. He knows the boy will be sluggish for a day or two but will bounce back quickly. The tiny punctures on the throat have already begun to heal, and he has left the suggestion in the boy’s mind that he was attacked by other humans in a group. 

The clean blood is intoxicating, and he is annoyed that he isn’t able to have it always. Avoiding risk is so ingrained him, however, that it doesn’t occur to him that he might change his usual diet, break out of his own restrictions. He thinks about this and a feeling of deep unease comes over him when he considers what he is doing this night: venturing into the domain of normal humans in order to influence one of them. He’s not even sure how he’s going to manage this. What if she proves immune to his influence? She seemed to be unfazed by his stare. What if he has no power over her at all?

No, this is unthinkable. He has no idea if there are humans who are completely immune to influence. He doesn’t remember ever coming across one. He searches what rules he was given and finds no reference to immune humans. He shakes his head, drives the thought from his mind. He will find out tonight. 

He enters the library exactly on time, precisely five minutes before his shift begins. There will be few visitors tonight, he knows. Most people will prefer to be outdoors, enjoying the mild weather. The brown-haired woman comes in twenty minutes later and takes her usual seat in the middle of the large open reading room, where she can see him clearly as he moves about. He doesn’t look at her, ignores her half-wave and whispered hello as he passes within feet of her to retrieve a stack of books. He knows she will stay until closing, will dawdle until the last possible minute before the doors are locked. Ordinarily he would finish his work approximately thirty minutes later and the night watchman would let him out by the side door. Tonight, however, as she trudges out the door with a final look back over her shoulder, he zips through the door behind her and fades just long enough for her to go ahead of him some yards. Then he follows.

7.

Her home is not far from the library. As he studies the area, he wonders at the people who live here. Their lives seem tidy and not so much larger than his, defined by their own daily routines. He wonders what it would be like to live this way, in nice buildings with neighbors nearby, people who talk to each other. How would it be to live among others of your kind, with similar lives, to be the same as they? He can’t remember ever having lived like this, and yet...and yet, there must have been a time _before_ , a time when he was not as he is now. He was changed, he knows that much, he was turned from one thing into another by...someone. His maker. The one who taught him the rules, who taught him how to survive. He doesn’t remember a face, but sometimes he hears a faint echo of a voice, like an old dream. 

Since his maker ended, he has never encountered another like himself. 

The brown-haired woman unlocks the door of a building and enters. Moments later a light appears in the window of a room on the first floor. He knows it is hers, he can easily trace her scent in the air. He waits a few moments more, then flashes to the door of her building. A man exits and before the door can close again, he zips inside. He follows the woman’s scent to her door. 

The buzzing energy of this place is distracting. Voices, breath, activity - all the usual busy-ness of human beings creates a sea of sound and motion, constantly in the background. He is used to the abandoned areas near to his lair, where no one goes, where the energy is damped and muted except for the few fringe dwellers, those unwanted by society or unwilling to follow its rules. Even the library seems frenetic to him at times, with all its whispers and low voices. Here, the ebb and flow is constant, rising and falling with no discernible pattern, movement for movement’s sake, noise made simply for the sake of making noise. It occurs to him that perhaps he is much better off living where he is than in the middle of this chaos. 

The curious, unusual thought startles him: how does the brown-haired woman feel about the constant whirl of tumultuous, corybantic energy in which she lives? Does she like it? This thought creates an urgency to his mission, an impulse to be get on with it, quickly, and return to his usual routine. This proximity to danger, this strange and unexpected curiosity, stirs something deep inside him that he dimly recognises - something that carries with it a stimulation that is both familiar and oddly distant. It can only be a threat to him. Everything that is outside his cautious routine is a threat...

He cannot physically pass through solid objects. He cannot turn to mist and float through cracks and crevices. He can flash - when the way is open. He can fade and become virtually invisible - when the light is dim enough. He stands at her door and considers the best way to gain entry to her living quarters. In the end, he settles for the standard human demand for entry: he knocks.

When the woman opens the door, she freezes, her mouth falling open, her eyes wide with startlement. He takes this opportunity to slip past her through the door. She stands for a moment staring at the empty space where he had been, still dazed. Finally she shakes her head, as if clearing it, closes the door and turns...she gasps and her hands fly to her mouth as she sees him standing behind her; she backs against the door. 

Her heart is racing; he can hear it thumping in her chest, see the quickened pulse in her throat. She is trembling. He prepares himself to move, thinking she will scream, but she only stands there gasping for breath, staring at him. 

He is very still, waits to see what she will do, his eyes narrowing slightly as he examines her. She is not beautiful in the classic sense. Her eyes are interesting. But there is something about her face...He lifts his head a bit, his nostrils flare as he isolates, identifies the myriad smells that waft through this small space. There is an animal hiding under a chair. There are human food smells in the other room. Soaps and toiletries, cleaning supplies, a multitude of odors and aromas. He blocks them all seeking her personal scent...there, roses and bergamot again, and that other warm and musky smell he noticed before, a faint trace of food on her hands, and soap on the rest of her skin…

She is still staring, but she seems to have come to the conclusion, since he hasn’t moved and he isn’t leering at her, that he isn’t a threat to her, at least not yet. She tries to speak, swallows, clears her throat, tries again.

“What...who...wh…” She seems to be having trouble forming words, sentences. He understands this, ignores her attempts. He is too distracted by his curiosity and something indefinable in her face to think about anything else at the moment, so he continues to stand and look at her, studying her like a specimen under a microscope. 

His behavior is so strange that it penetrates her fear and confusion, and her body loses some of its tension. The trembling stops, though her breathing is still quick and shallow. Finally, she finds her voice, though it comes out as more of a squeak than she would like.

“What...what are you doing here? How…” She gulps, takes another quick breath. “How did you find me?”

He ignores her questions, opts instead to turn his head slowly and look at the room. He doesn’t often get a chance to see inside human homes. Most of his interactions with them take place either at the library or outdoors. Again that prickle of curiosity, which is becoming so strong that it is overpowering his caution. Words filter through his mind _alarm_ _dangerous_ and he dismisses them - wondering at himself even as he wants to see more, know more...He turns back to the woman. 

“Why do you watch me?”

8.

His voice is like rich dark velvet flowing over her. It slides over her skin, caresses her, lulls her. She closes her eyes then pops them open again; her breathing has deepened and her lips part as she stares into those eyes she had so desperately wanted to see before...They are pale, neither green nor blue nor grey nor gold, but a mixture of all four blending, separating, changing according to the movements of his head in the light. The sharp planes of his face fascinate her, contrast with the lushness of his mouth. The dark curls and waves of his hair invite touch and her fingers twitch with anticipation. His slender body is erect, ramrod straight, but she’s seen the unearthly, fluid grace of his movements. As all this registers in her consciousness, she is aware of a difference in the air, a kind of _shift_ taking place, two plates sliding against one another, aligning and forming a new figure...the feeling recedes and she is left with no idea what has happened but with the unmistakable knowledge that everything is _different_ ; everything has changed. 

She focuses again, sees the alteration in his expression and there is an opening in her, a place where there was no place before, knowledge she has no way of knowing, foreign, alien, and yet as familiar as her everyday life. She is _expanded_ , larger than herself - and yet she is the same as she was before, all of herself is exactly as she was before he came…

His eyes have widened _astonishment_ _alarm_ , his lips are parted as if he was about to speak, his posture slightly altered like an animal frozen as it prepares to flee - and suddenly it shifts again and he tilts his head, looks at her as if she’s spoken in some alien language and he’s trying to figure out why he _understands_ it…

Long minutes pass as they study each other, examine themselves inwardly. 

_He is...not human! Oh god, blood, he lives on blood, that can’t be right he can’t be_

_She is apart from the rest of them like me but not like me but she is not_ them

_I can feel him in me_

_How can I know her this way_

_This can’t be happening I’m losing my mind but I feel fine where is all this coming from_

_There is no threat here but she is a human she is dangerous_

_How do I know this what has happened_

_Why do I feel this about her_

_WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME!_

“V-vampire? My god, it’s not possible, you’re...but…” She stammers, amazed, confused, but not afraid. _How can I not be afraid of him…?_

He is silent, listening to a tiny distant voice screaming at him to flee, while his mind fills with knowledge of this small, brown-haired woman _Molly_ and her life. _She is no threat to me, even knowing what I am. How can that be?_

A deep breath, and again. He wills himself to relax, unclench his hands. He blinks, his tongue peeks briefly between his lips. 

“Perhaps...we should sit and...talk.” 

9.

Reality twists, turns in on itself, reforms - and we barely notice. We consider it fixed, permanent, in order to exist from day to day with some semblance of order in our lives, but the truth is this: reality changes from second to second, reforming, becoming something _other_ , while we place an image of it in our minds as one thing and one thing only. What we _think_ and what _is_ are two entirely different things. 

She has experienced the impossible, and accepts it without reservation, without question. This person, this _being_ , in front of her right now has become her reference pointin this new fluid reality, and he is, miraculously, _known_ to her, a familiar beacon of safety in the unknown dark. 

And so she sits with him, this strange, startling but familiar entity, on her comfortable sofa in her cosy flat, understanding that nothing _nothing_ will ever be the same again.

His beauty still shocks and entices; his difference is explained - outrageous as it may be, as bizarrely as it became known, it simply _is_ \- and he is here. 

He is more familiar with the outrageous and bizarre, but nothing quite like this. She has shown him _human_ as he has never known it (or if he has, he doesn’t remember), from the _inside,_ the totality of an emotional being that is at once alien but oddly not - and his curiosity has grown into an enormous _need_ to know and more, to understand.

There is so much to question, so much to explore, but for the moment they let it all settle between them, water finding its own level, before they begin. She finds a bottle of wine and a glass, her usual evening alleviation of stress. He examines objects littering her table, touching, grounding himself again in the _here_ as well as now.

Talk is slow to start, hesitant, stilted. As they progress, what they now know of each other facilitates communication and they each find an unexpected enjoyment in it. He is slightly less easy with verbal exchanges, since it hasn’t been as necessary for him to use words, but the words - as well as the concepts behind them - are there in abundance, gathered from centuries of books. She is precise but timid at first; her confidence grows as they continue. 

“Do you have a name?” 

“Sherlock.”

“Unusual name. I like it,” she smiles.

She studies him, entranced by his large beautiful hands with their long fingers, the shifting colors of his eyes. He is somewhat relaxed now, leaning back on her sofa, and every slight shift of his body sends a ripple of pleasure through her. 

He watches her face, the flitting of expressions across it, and finally finds a word for what he’d seen earlier, that had made her face so much more interesting than it should have been: character. It glows in her face with the warmth of flame. It’s a word with which he’s become familiar in his reading, describing the stronger protagonists, the ones he wished were real. Her character shows in her eyes, in the set of her mouth, in her determination and courage in the face of fear - and in her quick but difficult acceptance of what has happened to them both. He enjoys listening to her soft voice when she speaks and watching her expressive face. He’s never been close enough for long enough in human company to encounter real character before; it seems almost magical, as if she had suddenly stepped fully formed out of one of his books. 

“What is this, this thing that’s happened with us? Do you know?” 

“No. I’ve never experienced anything like this before. And there’s no one I can ask.”

He tells her what he can recall of his life over so many years, explains how he lives, what he can and can’t do. She listens, asks questions. She begins to understand that he is not like the stories she’s read; almost none of the mythology applies to him. But neither is he like the newly popular romantic vampires, cartoonish in their glittering perfection. He is beautiful, yes, but he is not heroic or dashing. What he does, how he lives, would horrify most normal people. He describes the simplicity and complexities of it all, and in a wash of empathy, she meets his aloneness up close, sees his difference as the cruel and terrible punishment that it is. All these years, these hundreds of years, to be so apart, so banished from human contact, even while living among them...it beggars belief, fills her with a horror deeper than she would have felt if he had told her he had slaughtered children. She knows the tiniest sliver of that apartness, that difference _that rejection_ and sees it enlarged and darkened a thousand fold and lasting forever, with no possible relief...tears fill her eyes and she buries her face in her hands.

This reaction puzzles him at first. He watches, perplexed, as her tears devolve into sobs - _for_ _him_. He has never experienced this level of sympathetic involvement before, but begins to feel a tinge of it sparking in his own emotions, ones he’d thought were lost to him. The intensity, the sheer size of it, distresses him and he suddenly feels a need to alleviate _her_ distress - more out of concern for himself than for her. But then comes the revelation that this reasoning is not quite suitable; for perhaps the first time he catches a glimmer of true understanding of the reasons, the motivation behind human interaction, behind the concern - he does desire to alleviate her distress, not because it pains _him_ but because it pains _her_.

He is at a complete loss as to how to go about this. His initial impulse it to touch her in some way, but apart from accidentally, his desire to touch any human has always had to do with hunger, with feeding, with physical need. The two are completely different, though this new impulse is becoming equally compelling. He wants her to stop crying; telling her this does not seem to have an effect. The sobbing is beginning to affect him, make him uncomfortable. He could leave; that seems reasonable on the surface, but the end result - going away from her - is not desirable. Should he touch her? The idea is alarming, somewhat frightening. 

But he _knows_ her. Now, after what’s happened, he _knows_ that she means no harm to him at all, that, oddly, she is drawn to him for the very reason that has kept him hidden and apart for so very long, and that her crying arises from it. He stands, goes to her and drops to his knees in front of her, slowly reaches up and pulls her hands away from her face. 

_Sound, torrents of it filled with neon twisting shapes, sheets of silver slashed with brilliant exotic rainbows, a horrendous clap of thunder and sudden white billows smoke, the peal of giant bells, passionate sound and impossibly sweet light mixed into one terrific explosion and then_

_Silence - like air after drowning, like unbearable tenderness, like white crystalline towers rising slowly towards infinite perfection, like golden roots grasping devouring in ecstatic joy_

He pulls away from her, falling backwards, scrabbling on his hands and knees. He turns and stares at her from where he crouches, his heart hammering its way out of his chest. She is sitting, stone still, her hands gripping the arms of the chair as if she would crush them to powder, her face fixed in a rictus of either astonishment or fear _both_ pulling air into her lungs in desperate gulps. 

Minutes, hours later he looks up at her from where he has crawled and curled himself into a ball on the floor. She has fallen back in the chair, limp, staring at nothing. She is still alive, he can hear her heartbeat, still strong. A deep sadness washes through him, pulling him towards her - a desire to run his hands over her skin, to learn her bones and muscle, to stroke her softeness...to see her eyes fill with light again. He crawls on all fours until his face is inches from her knees. Her smell is different - still the rose and bergamot, but tinged now with amber and some undefinable scent that makes him want to weep. With a hand that trembles in fear and need _want_ he touches her knee with his fingertips…

Warm skin. No incredible sounds or lights, no thunder or smoke or bells. Just the ordinary, usual sounds of her flat surrounded by the ordinary tumult of life outside it. He grasps an arm of the chair, pulls himself up on wobbly legs. As he bends toward her, reaching for her hand, she suddenly stirs, looks up at him with a half smile and a deep sigh. 

He blinks at her, straightens. She seems well enough. He turns and walks to the sofa, sits again, silent, waiting. She finally leans forward in her chair, elbows on knees, hands clasped. She glances around the room before finally settling her gaze on him, still with that small smile on her face. 

“Well,” she says. “Well. I...I don’t quite...I mean, that was…” She breaks off, shakes her head slightly. “What was _that_?”

Hearing her soft voice calms him a bit, anchors him again. He takes a deep breath, lets it out, looks at her with wide eyes. “I haven’t the slightest idea. It seems to have passed, however.”

She regards him seriously now, a tiny frown line appearing between the wings of her brows. 

“Sherlock...what...what are we going to do about...this, whatever it is? I mean, obviously there’s something very strange…” She stops and gives a soft laugh. “Strange isn’t the word for it. It’s beyond strange. It’s like...suddenly being tossed into another dimension - “ She feels like she’s starting to babble.

“How do you see me?” His interruption is soft but definite. 

“What do you mean? I s-see you as...a man...an oddly beauti -”

He cuts her off again. “No. How do you _see_ me? How did you know I was...not the same as you.”

She sits back in her chair again, pondering his question as she twirls a strand of her hair around her finger. It’s a curiously childlike motion, giving her an air of innocence that belies the depth of experience and intellect he knows is inside her. He is filled with peculiar thoughts, questions, his nerves tingle, words tumble over themselves in his brain. Something is coming to life in him, something he thinks might be familiar but he isn’t sure. Neural pathways are forming, synapses firing along axons, dendrites grasping...he searches for a word, a single word to describe what’s happening and finds long passages from books but no single word…

Molly watches him intently. He is obviously experiencing some inner confusion, just as she is, but he is struggling with it, battling his way through some great obstacle. His eyes are unfocused, brows knit in a frown, his curls tumbled over his forehead, hands moving, twisting together in some slow arcane dance. She studies him, finally afforded the chance to watch him closely, to observe him fully, privately. She shies away from examining what has happened to them; there will be time for that later. For now she simply watches him find his way through whatever internal labyrinth he’s wandering, and takes pleasure in his physical beauty. 

It’s truly astonishing, she thinks, how easily we adapt to the extraordinary. She is surrounded by death, nearly every day. Death, for her, has become commonplace, though always still affecting; it is a part of life, of ordinary existence, for everyone. This...this is not ordinary existence. This is far beyond ordinary, way outside the pale. Whatever has happened _is happening_ here tonight is apart from anything, any experience she could ever have dreamed. It is, in fact, much like a dream. And yet...and yet...here he is. This strange, eerily beautiful man _who is not a man but something other_ has entered her life and changed it irrevocably, shown her the impossible can be real, opened her up and turned her reality inside out - and she is sitting here with him as if she’s invited him for dinner, waiting for him to order his thoughts.

10\. 

She comes out of her own thoughts to find him focused again, staring at her. He speaks without preamble, taking up where he left off.

“Is it because of your own difference? That you could see mine?” He leans forward slightly, his eyes nearly glowing he is so intent.

“No. That may be part of it, but I don’t think that’s the whole reason.” Softly.

“What then? How did you _know_ when so many others haven’t seen it? That’s why you watched me. Because you sensed the difference in me.”

“Sherlock, I did know there was something different about you. In fact, most of the people at the library know there’s something different about you. But I don’t think anybody, least of all myself, knows - knew - exactly what it is. Lots of people are different. Not quite as different as you, but extremely different from ordinary humans.”

He waved his hand in the air, as if dismissing what she was saying, tossing it away. 

“I know all that. But you _knew_ that I am more different, a...further difference.”

She shakes her head. “No. I didn’t know how different you are, or in what way. I was drawn to you. Fascinated by you. Perhaps I sensed it subconsciously, but no, I didn’t have any conscious recognition of the way you’re different.”

He let this sink in. “But your differences allowed you to approach me. You are tenacious. You were planning on trying it again.”

She nods, thinking she should feel slightly embarrassed by her obsession with him. Instead she feels a bit proud of herself. “Yes. I wasn’t going to give up.”

A sudden realisation hits her then, one so obvious - given what she knows about him now - that she feels a bit thick for not seeing it earlier.

“Oh my God. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it. That’s why you came here tonight, to stop me from -”

He nods. “Yes. I thought you were...a threat, dangerous to me. I came to dissuade you from pursuing your interest.”

“How? How would you have dissuaded me?” There is no fear in this, only curiosity. 

He blinks several times before he answers. 

“I would have used my influence on you. Planted the idea in your brain that it was not good to keep on with your interest.”

“And now?”

His voice is very soft. “Now...I think you might be immune to that. The thought had occurred to me before that you might be, but I’ve had no experience in the past with any humans that were, and I couldn’t recall any rules - “

He stops, stands. Paces around the room, deep in thought, hands pressed together in front of his lips. 

“There are _rules_ for this?” 

“What?”

“You said rules, what rules?”

He stares down at her, suddenly torn. _This is insane! She is human!_

But the rules are already broken. For her, they are shattered completely. She is no threat, no danger. She is not afraid of him, is immune to influence. She feels no horror at what he is, what he does....

_In fact, she would defend him, protect him. She knows all of what he is, what he’s done, and yet...she would stand by him, even keep him from harm if she is able. He knows this as surely as he knows...anything._

These ideas are so foreign to his experience, so blatantly wrong _against the rules_ where most humans are concerned, that he can only stare at her helplessly, unable to even express his confusion. And yet, he knows it’s true: in her own way, she is almost as unlike other humans, as apart from them, as he is. She _understands_ his difference. And she accepts it, without fear, without judgment. 

Relief. Gratitude. He has no memory of ever feeling these, but they flood through him now and his entire body trembles, as though he innately recognises them, knows them for the gifts they are. 

It is nearly dawn. He is aware of the lethargy approaching. He should be in his lair, where it is safe, where he can relax and think. 

He looks at this small, soft-voiced woman _Molly_ and finds he is reluctant to leave her. So much has happened in this one night, these few hours. So much has changed. In his long life, change has always been external: seasons, decades, centuries - all have marched on and he has watched the life around him alter, evolve, become different in physical nature, in attitude, in habit. For him it has always been the same. The small adaptations he has made have had virtually no effect on him internally. Here, in this room, in this one night, he is now radically different. The understanding he has gained, the exchanges with this human, this woman, have overcome centuries of sameness, have introduced him to a new world of _possibility_. 

She is watching him. The mental link they have shared has faded somewhat, but he still feels connected to her, knows - without knowing _how_ \- that they are bonded through this experience. 

And he finds he wants more.

He asks, knowing the answer, but feeling he should ask. 

“May I come here again?”

She smiles at him. “Of course.” There is so much she wants to know, so much she wants to say. 

His eyes have turned a deep sea-green. He lifts his head, draws himself up, nods at her.

“Until then.” He starts to turn away towards the door, stops. “Until then...Molly.” 

Then he is gone.

She knows she won’t sleep. She is filled with energy but relaxed, mind buzzing. The evening filters through her brain in images, emotions. She has no idea what the future might be like with this man in it _a vampire, Molly, seriously_ but for the first time in a very long while, she is looking forward to it.

He doesn’t return to his lair. He finds the fire escape, climbs up it to the roof of her building, sits in the shadow of an air shaft while the lethargy creeps through him. He doesn’t know what harm, if any, could come to her, but he will keep watch just in case. He will protect her. He will keep her safe. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A slightly shorter chapter. The usual disclaimers apply. Please review, comment, critique, leave a smiley or a banana peel. Tell me what you think. 
> 
>  
> 
> Just kidding about the banana peel. :)

1.

The sounds of the city change as darkness begins to bleed into the light; daytime sounds of rush and work and business give way to evening sounds of music and laughter and the buzz of added electricity - a somewhat smaller but more intense energy. The change is subtle but plain to the ones who possess the ability to discern the difference. 

The lethargy is not sleep. It is not trance. Though he allows his body to slow over the duration, he is able to rise from it instantly if needed, and retains awareness throughout. It is simply a resting phase for the body, and though it is not anything to which he must succumb at prescribed intervals, it is necessary for his body to rest and repair itself. Doing without is possible for a time, but eventually, periodically, he must submit, at least for a short while. 

Sitting atop a building in daylight with the noise of the city around him doesn’t interfere with the lethargy, but the intensity of sound and motion during the day, away from his lair, is distracting, and he wishes he had some sort of covering or shelter to rest in rather than being this exposed. The time is long past when he needed to hide, but the automatic inclination is to be hidden. 

Idle thoughts drift through his brain as he sits in the shadow of the air shaft, waiting for evening. He considers what has occurred with the brown-haired woman _Molly_ examining his own reaction to it. He is drawn to her now, is loathe to leave her, though he has no idea why. He has never trusted a human before, but as he sorts his way through what he now knows of her, he again is certain that she poses no threat, that instead, she is inclined to _protect_ him. How she would do this is beyond him. 

He senses her deep attraction to him, still finds it curious. Like many other humans he’s encountered, she finds him appealing physically, is pulled by what she perceives is the ‘mystery’ about him - however, she _sees_ him, has apparently sensed, unlike the others, a deeper difference from the beginning. The connections forged when they studied each other, and when he touched her the first time, puzzle and intrigue him. This is new, this curiosity about a human, this experience with one, and it has been so long _so very very long_ since he has experienced anything ‘new’ that it stirs parts of him he had thought atrophied and useless for at least a century or more.

She has made him feel... _alive_ , in a way he can’t recall ever feeling before.

2.

In spite of her excitement and her belief that she couldn’t possibly sleep, Molly finds herself sitting in her chair dozing. The second time she jerks herself awake she gives in and wanders into the bedroom, falls across the bed still dressed, and immediately settles into a deep sleep. Toby finally finds the courage to creep out from under the upholstered chair in the lounge and jumps up beside her, mewing pitifully. When she doesn’t respond, he lies down as close to her as he can get and also sinks into oblivion. 

As the afternoon wanes and dusk approaches, Molly opens her eyes and sits up in the bed, suddenly wide awake. She’s always been slow to wake, slogging through her mornings zombie-like until she’s had two cups of coffee and her shower. She thinks she should be exhausted after her encounter with Sherlock the night before, but she is bright and alert and full of energy. Toby mews at her from his nest on her pillow and she absently reaches towards him to scratch his head, but he hisses at her and jumps off the bed, scrambles underneath it. This is unusual behavior for him. He rarely hisses and never has at _her_. She sniffs her hands, thinking she might have touched something that irked him (she hides her orange peels quickly if he’s around, he detests citrus smell and will usually run from her until she washes her hands) but doesn’t smell anything on her fingers. 

She slips into a kind of reverie, as images and thoughts from the night before tumble through her mind, and her mouth curves into a half smile. Wondering where he spent the night brings an image of him stalking the park, hunting prey, and she is startled by it. 

_Why am I not disturbed and frightened by this idea?_ She shakes her head, glances around her bedroom, a bit disoriented by the divergence of what she thinks and what she feels she _should_ be thinking. _I should be terrified, completely sickened by what he is, what he does, and yet...all I feel is that I want to save him, and...arousal._ And here her thoughts are abruptly halted as she considers that last. _Is he capable of that? Do...vampires..._ do _that? As well as...well, the other thing?_

Suddenly she is breathing too fast, and bends forward, dizzy. _The_ _other_ _thing_. She had actually seen it, _felt_ it last night when they, when whatever happened to them happened, when they were _joined_. He bites people and...drinks their blood! And she is appalled because the idea, as disgusting as it _should_ be, excites her.

3.

He starts his regular shift at the library, maneuvering himself so that he’s able to watch the large doors at the front of the building. Leaving her alone has created disturbance in him, an anxiety that is in turns alarming and - strangely - satisfying. The swirling turmoil leaves him feeling oddly still connected to her, as though concern about her welfare maintains their bond and cements it. He still has no idea what would possibly threaten her but his urge to keep her safe has not lessened.

She enters the library approximately thirty minutes after his shift begins, her usual time. She finds him quickly, glances up at him with a little smile, and takes her seat in the center of the large reading room. He goes about his job, watching her from the corner of his eye. She is wearing bright colors that he finds pleasing - and suddenly stops in the process of shelving a book, wondering at this. He can’t recall ever noticing before what colors she wore. He knows that humans are generally slaves to what they call ‘fashion’, something he has never understood and about which he has never cared to learn. He has no idea if Molly is fashionable; he doesn’t know how he would tell. But her clothing and the colors of it suit her, he thinks, and is satisfied with that. 

As the end of his shift nears, he cheats, and flashes through the stacks finishing with the last books, so that he can leave with her. She gathers up her bag, looks around for him and feels a pang when she doesn’t see him. She is filled with sudden sadness, a small ache in her chest, thinking he’s changed his mind and no longer wants anything to do with her. But as she passes through the doors, she feels a pressure at her back, as though a gust of wind had pushed her forward, and suddenly he is there beside her, looking down at her with those impossible eyes, serious, searching her face. She smiles at him and he lifts his head a little, eyes widening as if he’s surprised by it.

They stand on the steps of the library for long minutes, gazing at each other, before he turns and offers her his arm - a gesture so old fashioned, but so utterly lovely, that she is at once startled and completely charmed by it. No man has ever offered his arm to her before. She hesitantly slips her hand into the crook of his elbow and they continue down the steps. At the bottom, he stops, looks at her and asks in that rich, midnight velvet voice, which seems to make her vibrate from head to toe, “Shall we continue to your home, or somewhere else?” 

She blinks and drops her gaze, then looks up at him again. She is unaccountably shy tonight, torn with confusion about why she so desperately wants to be with him, and how she can not be afraid of and repulsed by him.

He senses something isn’t...right...with her. He sighs, stares over her head for a moment, thinking. He has no experience with human emotion except for what he gleaned from her the night before when they were joined for that brief time. He doesn’t sense fear from her exactly - he can generally smell fear on humans - but…

“Something is...worrying you about this. About me.”

She bites her lower lip, nods. “Yes. I...about what you are. What you do. You know, when you...need…” She pulls into herself, shoulders tightening, looks down. “About when you need...food.”

4.

He is still looking over her head, his gaze distant, somewhere else. Has he made a crucial mistake with this woman? Is he wrong about her, about what has happened between them? About how he... _feels_...about her? Feels. That alone warrants more investigation, sets off warning signals inside him. He sifts through what he knows, examines his experiences with her. He still doesn’t sense fear...but there is something else. He finds frustration worming its way through him, impatience. 

He looks down at her again, his eyes narrowed. 

“You’re not afraid. Yet something still pricks at you about me, worries you.” His gaze sweeps over her from head to toe and back again. “You slept, despite thinking you wouldn’t. You came here tonight, again, eager to see me. And now something holds you back. Something about my feeding…”

He sees a slight shiver pass through her small body and suddenly understands. It was not a shiver of fear or revulsion. 

“You’re curious. Ah. I see. You think you should be frightened and repulsed, and yet you’re not.”

She still won’t look at him, her gaze darts to the side, down - anywhere but his face. 

“Look at me.” His voice is low, not harsh, but she is compelled to look up at his face, into those remarkable eyes with their shifting colors. He studies her, her dark eyes wide, pupils dilated, her lips parted slightly, cheeks flushed pink, and something stirs at the base of his spine, works its way into his gut. His breathing deepens and the small bumps behind his two lateral incisors tingle...He blinks, steps back from her quickly.

He is astonished, confused. 

The very thought of feeding from her is both abhorrent and ridiculous. He fed before his shift at the library, he has no need of blood. If hunger was on him, he would certainly not use her, not now, after what he’s experienced with her. His need to protect her would seem to preclude ever even considering her a source of sustenance, and yet…

And yet the desire to taste her is filling him, pulling at his mind, stirring a need in him to hold her close and tight, to seek out and deeply inhale that warm musky scent she carries. He can almost taste her breath and the salty sweetness of her skin on his tongue…

A strangled moan escapes him; he turns and stumbles away from her, shaking his head, gasping. 

Molly watches him turn away from her with a cry, his hands covering his mouth. Her pulse is racing, her breathing is quick and shallow. In the seconds before he moved, she had been caught in a fantasy vision so deeply arousing and horrifying that it’s left her breathless and shaking. Her skin tingles and heat flashes through her followed by waves of chills.

She stares at his back, the movement of his shoulders as he gasps, and sudden tears fill her eyes. The horror she had felt seconds before is rapidly fading, leaving behind sadness and yearning. She wants to touch him, pull him around to face her and wrap her arms around him, while the vision of him bending his head down, feeling his mouth on her skin, coils hot in her belly, making her wet. She stands there, staring, helpless, not knowing what to do or how to react. 

5.

He struggles, fighting the desire, fighting the confusion. He gulps air and gradually his breathing slows. He straightens in small increments, raises his head and closes his eyes until his heart no longer feels like an engine in overdrive. He can feel her behind him still, knows she is fighting her own battle. Whatever has just happened between them _must_ _not_ be allowed to happen again. He licks his lips, presses them together, blinks rapidly. Rationally, he knows he should abandon this insane escapade, this exercise in stupidity. Even as he considers this, the thought of leaving Molly, of never seeing her again, fills him with sadness and dread. He wonders at himself, at how he’s suddenly gotten to this place, all because this one small human piqued his curiosity and made him abandon his rules. 

He feels her moving behind him and slowly, warily turns to face her. Her cheeks are wet with tears and her mouth trembles. He wonders how much she understands of what just happened, wonders what it felt _feels_ like to her. Curiosity again. 

She takes a step towards him and he allows it, waits to see what she’ll do. She stares at him with those large, dark, tear-filled eyes and he is overcome with a desire _the_ _need_ to protect her again, to keep her safe. The irony that it is him that she may need to be protected from is not lost on him. 

When she speaks her voice is small and shaky and he watches her carefully, his expression unreadable. 

“Can you...wh-what h-happened? What...was…?” She stops, swallows, sniffs. “Were you going...to…” She can’t say it, can’t quite utter the words. 

He lets her approach him, glad that the desire seems to be over and done with. There is no overwhelming need to...He blinks, pushes the sudden image away. 

“Perhaps we should do this...another time.”

“No! Please...please, I need to know, what _was_ that, what happened just then? I thought you were going to...to...shit!” 

Why is it so hard to say the damn words? 

“You thought I was about to feed on you.”

“Yes! No, no! I mean...were you?”

He looks down before answering, considering, choosing the words carefully. His voice is very soft when he speaks. 

“No. I don’t know what happened. I wanted…” He stops, swallows, clears his throat. “I think I wanted to...taste...you. Not feed. I don’t know. I’ve never felt that before. At least, that I can recall.” He stops and studies her face again, trying to gauge her reaction.

She is frowning now, turning the words over in her head. 

“Taste me. You mean...like a sample?”

The corner of his mouth quirks, not quite a smile. “If I’d wanted to ‘sample’ you, I would have done it before now.”

She stares at him, still sniffling, wanting...something. To be comforted? To be reassured? To be held, told that everything is all right, to feel his hands on her…

That. To feel him. To feel him do what, exactly, she’s not quite sure. There’s no indication that he wants to do anything. He stands there, his hands clasped behind his back, watching her, speaking matter of factly in a soft voice. And yet...and yet...just moments ago he was gasping, backing away from her, deeply in the throes of _something_. 

“What would happen? If you wanted to, you know...taste me.” 

He stares at her, his eyes glittering in the dim light cast from a lamp farther down the walk. _If I tell her, explain the mechanics of it, how will it affect her? Her curiosity will keep surfacing, her need to understand...She has seen it in her mind, the feeding. She doesn’t fear it, though she believes she should. Maybe telling her, showing her, would take away…_

“What exactly do you want to know?”

She blinks, thinks for a minute, then stares pointedly at his mouth.

“You don’t have fangs.” 

His eyes narrow and he frowns at her. 

“Fangs?”

“Well, I mean, there has to be...how do you get the blood out?” 

“Oh.” He pauses, considers the easiest way to explain this to her. “There are two...um, nodes...behind these two teeth…” He indicates his two lateral incisors with his finger. “Two pieces of…”

He stops, realises he has no idea what to call them. He was never told what they were. Bone? Cartilage? No, cartilage is too soft. Bone then.

“Bone. Two bits of bone, very thin and pointed and sharp, and hollow, actually, like hypodermic needles. They come down behind the teeth and past them, and...break the skin, here...” he touches his finger to his throat, “...and inject something that starts healing the punctures right away…” His voice trails off and he clears his throat. 

She has stepped very close to him, peering up at his mouth, brows knit in a slight frown as she listens. 

“So you don’t...kill them?” Her fingers twitch, wanting to probe in his mouth and feel the nodes, the bone needles. “Can you make the bone things come down when you want or do they only come down when you...when you’re...hungry…?” Deep in her mind a small voice is screaming at her to run, that she has gone insane and this is all a dream, while another part of her wants to giggle at this outrageous scene. 

After a minute, she steps back and stares at him. Then very softly, “You don’t really know much about it, do you.”

“No. I don’t.”

Molly sighs, and her expression softens. _He’s so very alone, so apart from...everyone and everything. And he doesn’t even understand himself why that is. All he knows is that he’s different, too different to be accepted._

“Sherlock, I know...this must be as strange for you as it is for me. I don’t have a clue what’s happening to us, but...I know that we’re in it together. I have a feeling that a lot of it might be...very scary. But maybe we can help each other understand? That is, if you want to.”

He has no words for this. There is nothing that has prepared him in his very very long life for anything like this small woman or what she’s saying to him. He is standing at the edge of a cliff in deep fog, unable to see the edge or what lies at the bottom of the precipice - or if there is a bottom at all. And she is urging him to take her hand and jump with her. 

Everything he has known before, the rules, the memories, everything, tells him to run, screams at him, tells him this is the way to true death, to be ended. But standing here looking into her eyes, hearing her voice, understanding that what he has experienced the last two nights has never _ever_ happened to him before, he finds himself ready to grab her hand and fling himself over the edge with her - just to see what happens next. 

He steps up beside her, offers his arm again. She smiles at him, takes his arm, and they walk into the night together. 


	3. Chapter 3

Sorry, this isn't a chapter. I just wanted to let everyone know that I haven't abandoned this or my other two WIPs. Life has conspired to keep me temporarily preoccupied - deconstruction and reconstruction inside my house, dealing with a pregnant kitty, an ailing son, a totally discombobulated hubby, and various other crises, have somewhat interfered with what I really want and need to do, which is write. However, I do see light at the end of this particularly frustrating tunnel and hopefully will be updating within a week. Good thoughts for my poor torn apart house, my poor ready-to-pop kitty, and the other mind-numbing situations (as well as a little not-so-gentle nudge to the Crisis Intervention Fairies who seem to be lying down on the job lately!) would be greatly appreciated, so that we can get this show back on the road. Thank you ever so much for your patience and for your lovely support!

**Author's Note:**

> Sherlock and Molly do not belong to me, unfortunately, and I do not profit from this writing. 
> 
> Thank you for reading. Please review and comment! Let me know what you think. Should this continue? Is it worth taking further? Do we want to know more about these two? Tell me.


End file.
